ecretary and treasurer, Mr.
Buckingham Skinner, costumed like the lilies of the conservatory, with
his high silk hat close to his hand. Nobody yet ever saw Buck outside
of an instantaneous reach for his hat.

And you might perceive the president and general manager, Mr. R. G.
Atterbury, with his priceless polished poll, busy in the main office
room dictating letters to a shorthand countess, who has got pomp and a
pompadour that is no less than a guarantee to investors.

[Illustration: Busy in the main office room dictating letters
to a shorthand countess.]

There is a bookkeeper and an assistant, and a general atmosphere of
varnish and culpability.

At another desk the eye is relieved by the sight of an ordinary man,
attired with unscrupulous plainness, sitting with his feet up, eating
apples, with his obnoxious hat on the back of his head. That man
is no other than Colonel Tecumseh (once "Parleyvoo") Pickens, the
vice-president of the company.

"No recherche rags for me," I says to Atterbury, when we was
organizing the stage properties of the robbery. "I'm a plain man,"
says I, "and I do not use pajamas, French, or military hair-brushes.
Cast me for the role of the rhinestone-in-the-rough or I don't go on
exhibition. If you can use me in my natural, though displeasing form,
do so."

"Dress you up?" says Atterbury; "I should say not! Just as you are
you're worth more to the business than a whole roomful of the things
they pin chrysanthemums on. You're to play the part of the solid but
disheveled capitalist from the Far West. You despise the conventions.
You've got so many stocks you can afford to shake socks. Conservative,
homely, rough, shrewd, saving--that's your pose. It's a winner in New
York. Keep your feet on the desk and eat apples. Whenever anybody
comes in eat an apple. Let 'em see you stuff the peelings in a drawer
of your desk. Look as economical and rich and rugged as you can."

I followed out Atterbury's instructions. I played the Rocky Mountain
capitalist without ruching or frills. The way I deposited apple
peelings to my credit in a drawer when any customers came in made
Hetty Green look like a spendthrift. I could hear Atterbury saying to
victims, as he smiled at me, indulgent and venerating, "That's our
vice-president, Colonel Pickens . . . fortune in Western investments
. . . delightfully plain manners, but . . . could sign his check for
half a million . . . simple as a child . . . wonderf